Comments (Archived):

Fred – your approach for this raise is extraordinary. It seems to me an ideal way to raise awareness and directly/quickly make a statement, and scale a positive impact on a targeted societal issue. It’s like a Flash Mob for a cause. Your match and your plea helped to spark me to act. I don’t think I would have without the match AND the well-thought-out, easy to use, approach — ie. It took me 2 minutes. All of these are factors and lessons learned for how to optimize the process for public good. Kudos and thank you!

Anne Libby
May 5, 2017

Thank you.

jason wright
May 5, 2017

i have no issue with an organisation like PP if it evolves its approach and advocates for rights for unborn children in the decision making process. some may say that this is contradictory, but i don’t. a pregnant woman and her unborn child are indivisible in any medical, moral, economic, or political consideration of outcome in my view.

Hiyito Patada
May 5, 2017

I have no problems with an organization like the GOP if it evolves its approach and advocates for the rights of born children and women (and people of color) in the decision making process. Some may that this is contradictory, but I don’t. A woman and mother, and her sick child, are indivisible in any medical, moral, economic, or political consideration of outcome in my view.

jason wright
May 6, 2017

then we agree, that human life is sacrosanct, at all stages and in all forms.

ShanaC
May 6, 2017

at what point are humans humans?Are HeLa cells sacrosanct?

jason wright
May 6, 2017

people who argue at this extreme end of the spectrum probably do so from a silo.when a heart starts beating? i’m sure you have one.

ShanaC
May 6, 2017

If most of the cells in your frontal and prefrontal cortex dies, (so, speech, personality, memories, the stuff that makes you, well you), and your body is hooked up to an IV and your amygdala seems to be functioning (so, your autonomous functions of the body are working just fine)*, such as in some rare cases of hypoxia, you’re dead. Your body still can go on for quite some time, including your heart, making you an excellent candidate for organ transplant which would save lives(shortage of organs is a thing nearly everywhere except Iran)Hell, this is a crazy simplified bad argument, Catholic theologians are still arguing about brain vs heart death.I’ve spoken to and read material by the lead neurosurgeon involved with the Halachic Organ Donation Society over heart v brain death and misreading jewish texts alongside not understanding the science of death. The guy isn’t a rabbi because he chose not to sit for rabbinical qualifying exams.To point, this is a major issue in third trimester abortions, many of which are for a fetus with Anencephaly.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…It experienced brain death before it was fully alive. But is it fully human?*note, I’m simplifying the science here immensely

JLM
May 6, 2017

.Good luck with that. People who perform and support abortions are not very evolutionary.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

ShanaC
May 6, 2017

I was a VERY high risk birth (my mother has an extreme unicornuate uterus). Judaism allows for much more liberal use of abortion in illness and life or death situations, including for very religious Jewish people like my parents. Being pregnant was a life or death situation that was very carefully monitored and my birth was witnessed by WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE (teaching hospital…). The person who came up with the ruling was Maimonides. And while I wouldn’t take most of his medical advice (his advice on getting enough sleep though…), his reasoning on Jewish law vis a vis abortion was very sound, especially in light of his medical background. -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…Abortion and/or having a premature scheduled c-section (which I wasn’t, but I suspect this was a factor for my brother given he wasn’t healthy at birth for no clear reason ever explained to me) is something on the table for women like my mother from day one of the pregnancy, medically speaking. Otherwise what you are actually saying, is it ok for my mother to risk ectopic pregnancies, bleed out from a labor that can’t be performed, a high risk that the fetus will die while still inside causing deathly infections, etc. (actually, list https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go… ) .Listen, I’m happy I’m alive. I also wouldn’t be totally shocked if it came out one day my mother had an abortion. All this means to me is my parents cared enough to want me (or my brother, depending on the time), and this means also caring enough to stay alive and put together emotionally and physically to have a healthy enough child that can make it through that kind of risky pregnancy. As a result, it’s a huge stretch to say that when my mother was pregnant with me “we were one/indivisble,” since I also was something that could have killed her.Unless you can label another part of yourself on a regular basis as “something than can kill you” and also “indivisible, but only short term” it is just pushing it.

JLM
May 6, 2017

.How would you have felt if your mother had decided to have you aborted?One of the big problems is that of the 50MM abortions in the US since legalized, some folks think one of them might have been as wonderful as you.How does that dilemma get resolved?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

ShanaC
May 6, 2017

I’m fine with the idea, because of the following question”Hey Shana, How would you have felt if abortion wasn’t legal and you killed your mother by being born?”Imagine growing up knowing you killed your mom by being born. That’s a really screwed up way of growing up.This, of course, assumes that1) she navigated the pregnancy that long2)couldn’t get a theraputic abortionOne study of the 2,775 so-called therapeutic abortions at private, not-for-profit hospitals in New York City between 1951 and 1962 found that 88% were to patients of private physicians, rather than ward patients served by the hospital staff.https://www.guttmacher.org/… (referring to specifically abortions for health reasons)My mother might have been very lucky since I believe her doctor was private, but to be honest, she may have been so high risk she may have been a ward patient.and of course, the real assumption3) reality: without excellent modern medical care, regular doctor visits, etc, in a world without abortion, reality is both of us would be dead.The year after abortion was legalized in NY in 1970, the maternal death rate dropped 45%. For the record, a lot of those deaths that no longer happened weren’t from botched illegal abortions. The health system was overcrowded treating botched illegal abortions that whole groups of other women just died in NYC.It was such a big deal at the time, it made it into the American Journal of Public Health, because no one ever though that making abortions legal would also mean that women who were carrying high risk births were more likely to live through the pregnancyhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go…As I said, I like being alive. Sometimes, you learn and respect that being alive means needing what appears backwards things. Doctors cut into me and you sometimes (rarely if ever). We call that surgery. Normally stabbing people with knives is a death sentence, yet surgery saves lives. Realistically, I know that if I want to save a woman’s life and give her another chance at having a baby, then she needs access to abortions, especially before the fetus is person-enough. Abortions should be legal, safe, accessible to all, and rarely used. Birth control of various types and family planning education is something everyone can use, even if they are nuns, both for just relating to each other purposes, for the fact that they have HUGE public health benefits, and even that hormonal birth control protects against ovarian cancer (which nuns can get, last I checked)And If we’re all worried about economics and abortion, then we need to have a separate conversation about the state and babies/children alongside a birth control conversation. Though as a warning, as I said, you walk into weird sorts of trouble if you privilege one life over another, especially if you have to make clear how it is person-enough.

awaldstein
May 6, 2017

Thanks for your level and informative thinking on this Shana.

ShanaC
May 6, 2017

You’re welcome. I’m not going to claim there aren’t really complicated questions about personhood, bodily integrity, theology and comparative theology, sociology/anthropology, science, public health, etc. There are plenty of places for important discussions and disagreement, but we aren’t even having those discussions because we’re not acknowledging the reality we can base such a discussion on.

awaldstein
May 6, 2017

Crazy complex I agree.Thought of you a while back as I just reread The Chosen and a number of other Chiam Potok books. A favorite author and a glimpse into a world not my own.

ShanaC
May 7, 2017

It’s a dated view.

awaldstein
May 7, 2017

I’m sure. He’s a great writer and then its the responsibility of the community should they care to provide another.

Guy Lepage
May 5, 2017

A great cause for sure.. Happy to donate.

DJL
May 5, 2017

“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it,” Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood. —“Woman and the New Race,” 1920, Chapter 5: The Wickedness of Creating Large Families

Infant mortality is an important thing, and a horrible experience for families to experience. Abortion is better than watching your baby die as a baby or toddler.

JLM
May 6, 2017

.No it isn’t said the guy who lost two babies. Not even close.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

ShanaC
May 6, 2017

1) How would you feel if you lost your wife and kept the babies? (Historically, this was a thing that happened very regularly)2)I’m friends with people who know the galenashttp://www.jta.org/2014/06/…I’m very aware what it does to couples, if only because I grew up being scared out of my mind to marry someone too genetically similar than me.

Donna Brewington White
May 7, 2017

Deleted.

ShanaC
May 7, 2017

Edit: Comment makes no sense now, oh wellfunctionally, this has actually been the case for the Jewish community for quite some time now (among IVF and not allowing certain marriages to happen). It is ironically the only way Hitler won.After round 3(or 4ish) of massive kill-offs among Ashkenazim over the past ~1500 years, the entire fully blooded (no intermarriages, sorry Fred, but genetically you’ve made things better…) plus the historic-religious/ethnic tendency to marry among only other Jewish people, the entire 12ish million plus population of Ashkenazim can be traced to about 350 individuals, with 40% of ashkenazim descended from only 4 women.Let’s pretend the Gotham Gal and I were randomly chosen from the pile of all fully blooded Ashkenazim world-wide. We’re the genetic equivalent of somewhere between 4th and 5th cousins, because all Ashkenazim outside of one’s actual family has this problem. For all the bad, offensive jokes about Hillbillies marrying their own cousins, most of the time if you see 2 jewish people marrying each other in the US, that is functionally what is happening from a genetics perspective..(Sidenote: Ashkenazim are also the largest and best studied human genetic isolate in the US, for a variety of lifestyle and socio-economic similarities everyone shares that are not as common in other human genetic isolates, and also works out to make studying us easier)Ashkenazim (and now Sephardim and Eidot Mizrachi, but for different reasons which I am not getting into here, ask me somewhere else/another time) have been genetically screening since the first tests were available (and actually, slightly before, since technically Tay-Sachs carriers have enzymes in their blood others do not). This means that yes, people have been aborting because watching a child die of tay-sachs is worse, among many other choices couples have made. It also means of the 127 people I graduated high school with, plus me (which was a yeshiva high school, everyone was Jewish) 0 had a sibling who died of Tay-Sachs, and 0 of us knew someone else who had a sibling who died of Tay-Sachs.It isn’t the only disease Ashkenazim freak over. There is a massive list or recessives, a humongous chunk cause death in infancy or toddlerhood. There is a 1:2 rate for Ashkenazim carrying a deleterious single gene recessive (plus a further approximate 1:40 chance of carrying BRCA1 or BRCA2, which is dominant.)Still, despite all of this, 2 Jewish people marrying still creates disasters fairly often. We really need to understand a lot more about genetics, genomics, epigenetics, etc. Israel has a surprisingly large amount of therapeutic abortions and infertility related issues between couples for otherwise healthy people (and also is one the world leaders in developing biotechnology around fertility). Hell, an ashkenazi couple that I share mutual friends with created an accidental discovery for the NIH while their daughter was dying (and her dying and death saved many lives because of the nature of marrow registries) http://www.jta.org/2014/06/…Even with healthy-ish Ashkenazi patients, there are questions. NYC doctors, depending on speciality, regularly ask patients if they are ashkenazi, because either medical evidence or anecdotal evidence for their practice has Ashkenazim needing different stuff than other white patients. The CDC even has different genetic screening and in some cases, medical advisories, for Ashkenazim.This might be one of those things that might be innately obvious to me because I grew up very Jewish in a primarily Ashkenazi community, but to me, this is real stuff that can (and does) happen and there are real medical and social reasons why you wouldn’t want to choose watch a child die.

DJL
May 5, 2017

Does anyone who is funding this know who Margaret Sanger is an her use of abortion via PP for racial genocide? So far not one single response. Certainly, Fred, you are aware if this?

Hiyito Patada
May 5, 2017

Come off it, already. You’ve posted this how many times? We’re talking about what life is going to be like in 2020, not what it was like in 1920.

DJL
May 5, 2017

I’m not sure I understand your comment.I am waiting for a single person to acknowledge that (1) they even know who she is, and (2) the foundation of planned parenthood was population engineering – and mostly against blacks. My theory is that people are funding things they don’t truly understand. And so far I have not gotten a single response that is coherent. (Hence I posted it twice – once each day when the topic was PP).

Hiyito Patada
May 5, 2017

I know who she is. If she said those things, and advocated for it, then she was clearly wrong. But what one woman said 100 years ago, does not make Planned Parenthood a criminal or corrupted organization now. Besides, she’s irrelevant to the discussion about the future of health care in this country.Founders of the republic owned slaves. Shall we tear up the Declaration of Independence and Constitution?

creative group
May 6, 2017

DLJ:Do you accept the following history and description of Plan Parenthood?The omission of opinions and commentary have been omitted.http://www.bbc.com/news/wor…We are Independent so a discussion regarding facts doesn’t offend us. The opinions pushed as fact and talking points enrage us from Progressives or Republicans.#UNEQUIVOCALLYUNAPOLOGETICALLYINDEPENDENT

awaldstein
May 5, 2017

This community has legs and social conscious and that is heartening.Thanks Fred.

Twain Twain
May 5, 2017

“WALK the talk” and “pay it back+forward+sideways” folks are inspiring.

Guest
May 5, 2017

Too few babies being killed on an annual basis?

Kirsten Lambertsen
May 5, 2017

Really respect the decision to choose this organization that provides critical healthcare services to women _and_ men. Thank you.When I was on state health insurance, PP was the _only_ place I could get my annual exam. Not *one* single other health care provider accepted state health insurance.

JLM
May 5, 2017

.I used to coach Cecile Richards’ daughter, Lilly, in a YMCA basketball league. Cecile is, of course, the current President of PP and the daughter of the late Ann Richards, Governor of Texas.Ann used to call my assistant and ask when the games were — Saturday mornings — and arrive with her Texas DPS troopers in tow. Whenever, she arrived, I’d put Lilly into the game.She used to ask me, “Coach, do you put Lilly in because I’m watching?””Yes, madame Governor, I do.”She had a great sense of humor. She’d ask me how Lilly was playing and I would say, “Lilly gets the ball and dribbles left. Left every time.”The Governor used to laugh in her whiskey, cigarette voice.”You’ll tell me if she ever goes the other way, won’t you?”She was one of a kind. Those were the days when politics didn’t last 24/7. I sat on the Board of the Texas Municipal League next to her when the schools were shut down over some funding issue. The CEO of Exxon was on the board.She gave him Hell about how hard it would be to recruit talent to Plano, Texas if the schools were shut down. The schools were open within a few days.One night she ‘splained what it meant to be a Texas Democrat, like Lloyd Bentsen. More conservative than Newton Gingrich, but from Texas.Fond memories.Every time I ever saw her thereafter, she’d call me “coach” and I’d call her Madame Governor.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

awaldstein
May 6, 2017

Fred–I love this guy btw and reminds of other brilliant, passionate and self conscious visionaries I’ve worked with.An aura of geekiness but this is from the head and the heart. Where everything should be and so so outstrips polish.Thanks!